Bloomberg Sues The Bucket Shop Known As The ECB, Seeks Disclosure Of Secret Greek Swap Documents

And so the spirit of Mark Pittman lives on. Bloomberg, which last year sued the Fed in a landmark FOIA case, and won (a decision which is being appealed by the kleptocrats but not the Fed), has decided to go transatlantic, and is now suing that smaller and far less viagraed cousin of the Fed, the ECB. Per Bloomberg: "The lawsuit asks the European Union’s General Court in Luxembourg to overturn a decision by the ECB not to disclose two internal documents drafted for the central bank’s six-member executive board in Frankfurt this year. The notes show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 cover page attached to the papers obtained by Bloomberg News. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet withheld the documents after the EU and International Monetary Fund led a 110 billion- euro bailout ($144 billion) for Greece. The dossier should be disclosed to stop governments from employing the derivatives in a similar way again and to show how EU authorities acted on information they had on the swaps, according to the suit, filed by Bloomberg Finance LP, the parent of Bloomberg News." And for all those who were concerned that Mutual Assured Destruction is purely a US response to a rat being cornered, it appears the virus has gone airborne: "The information contained in the two documents would
undermine the public confidence as regards the effective conduct
of economic policy,” Trichet wrote in an Oct. 21 letter,
turning down Bloomberg’s request for the documents. Disclosure
“bears, in the current very vulnerable market environment, the
substantial and acute risk of adding to volatility and
instability.” Hello, McFly... We got the impression that PGBs moving 350 bps in two hours after Trichet's own bucket shop of a central bank decided to buy every single outstanding bond in the open market may be a far more potent reason for market "volatility." As for undermining confidence, perhaps this murder of charlatans should have considered that before they set off on the world's most ridiculous pilgrimage to the gods of lies, hubris, deceit, market manipulation and propaganda. Lastly, as this is merely a "protect Goldman" exercise, which as everyone knows is the main party involved in this Greek swap "transaction" - who cares: everyone in the world knows full well the high ethical standards of the West 200-based hedge fund.

Bloomberg's editor in chief Matt Winkler gave an interview on Bloomberg TV explaining the reasoning for Bloomberg's actions:

"It's very straight forward. We are seeking full disclosure of documents that show how Greece was able to finance itself into a predicament that became the European debt crisis as we know it. It's entirely to the benefit of all the members of the EU, all of the citizens, all the taxpayers and for sure the financial markets. Transparency is something that has a way of enlightening perspective."

Winkler also commented on the derivatives Bloomberg is seeking more information on: "In this case, very complicated, intricate financing techniques were deployed to essentially enable Greece to put off consistently any kind of transparent reckoning of its indebtedness. That's really at the heart of this case and that's really why we are seeking these documents."

Winkler spoke about Bloomberg's earlier FOIA suit, saying, "We've just received a voluminous record of documents from the Federal Reserve, belatedly, having to do with the U.S. financial crisis and actually the transparency that resulted from the Dodd-Frank law was good for the market and good for bank stocks. They actually rallied with more information."

About the reasons for initiating the lawsuit, Winkler said, "What got our interest in the first place was the use of interest rate swap, which are extremely complicated and conceived in the dark…literally. Financing in the dark is a primarily reason why the financial unraveling occurred in 2007 and where there is a debt crisis with respect to Greece that has afflicted the rest of the European Union."